In medical treatments, such as surgery, a multitude of different medical apparatuses having different functions are often used simultaneously. In open or minimally invasive surgery, for example, images can be recorded using laparoscopes and endoscopes. These devices can come from various manufacturers and display a respectively recorded image on a monitor also provided by the manufacturer, once the recording signals have been appropriately processed in corresponding control apparatuses or computational units obtained from the manufacturer. Furthermore, apparatuses for monitoring a patient's circulation or metabolism can be used during surgery to monitor the patient's condition before, during and after surgery and, as appropriate, to generate warning signals if, for example, the breathing or heartbeat show irregularities or if problems occur with the anaesthesia. Furthermore, depending on the type of surgery, fluoroscopy apparatuses, x-ray apparatuses, ultrasound apparatuses, nuclear spin tomographs etc. are used, with which images are generated, which are displayed on screens provided specially by the individual manufacturers. Depending on the equipment available, the patient table, the light, the volume of acoustic outputs or the room temperature, for example, can be adjusted differently by the surgeon. Workstations for surgery, in which various apparatuses are used, generally comprise a multitude of control devices belonging to the respective apparatus and a multitude of display instruments that a surgeon is often supposed to keep an eye on as simultaneously as possible during surgery.
A medico-technical system workstation for open or minimally invasive surgery is known from U.S. Pat. No. 6,117,127. This system includes a holder tray and at least one connecting unit for instruments of medico-technical apparatus, an apparatus center, which is spatially separated from the connecting unit, for recording the medico-technical apparatus and a coupling unit, which couples the connecting unit and the apparatus center to each other.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,471,363 B2 describes a device for surgical purposes that is attached to the ceiling of an operating theater and comprises various cameras and monitors, which can be pivoted relative to each other.
In the case of the known, so-called integrated systems for simultaneously operating a multitude of different apparatuses, the problem exists generally that either all the systems have to be obtained from a single manufacturer and thus apparatuses and systems such as may already be available cannot easily be integrated, or that different input and output specifications make integrating new apparatuses into a system more difficult, since manufacturer-specific protocols are used, such that the software has to be altered if one apparatus is to be interconnected with another, and since different manufacturers often choose different operating designs.